Development and comparison of quantitative methods to evaluate the curd solidity of cauliflower

Effective determination of curd solidity is a critical component of the evaluation of cauliflower quality. In the current study, a rough solidity index (RSI), the curd voidage (CV), and two instrumental indexes based on the utilization of a texture analyzer, including 'deformation distance of 30 kg force' (DD) and 'gradient from 1 kg force to first peak' (GR), were developed to enable the quantification of the curd solidity of 20 cauliflower cultivars with different curd types. Significant linear correlations were observed between each two of CV, DD, and GR (0.8989 ⩽ R2 ⩽ 0.9450), while RSI was poorly related to them (0.4716 ⩽ R2 ⩽ 0.6034). Similarly, the results of hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) also showed that RSI produced more distinctive clustering pattern from the others. Our work demonstrated that CV, DD, and GR were useful indexes to evaluate the curd solidity. Meanwhile, their advantages, disadvantages and utilizable perspective were also discussed. These indexes could be very useful to enrich the evaluation system of cauliflower quality, and provide more objective and accurate data for cauliflower breeding and research.